House Love

Happy post Halloween. I'm ready for the other Holidays to be here. Now that I have a child, holidays somehow seem more fun and magical!! I can't wait to decorate for Christmas!

I've been busy around the house. Little tweaks here and there to make the house look more lived in. The realization hit me the other day that we might be in this house for awhile. I have been treating this house as a temporary dwelling place, but in reality, this is our home and I need to love it up. It's hard because this is a house I would've never picked out if I was house shopping. I really dislike so many things about it and I miss my old cute house.

The other day it really struck me at how ungrateful and bitter I have been about this house. And that is just wrong. I am thankful to have a roof over my head, a wonderful husband and a healthy sweet little boy. So I am working on accepting what I have and being thankful everyday for this house.

Thank you to Pinterest for giving me so many ideas to help make my house into a home.

Here are a few things I've done around the house....

Homemade Banner and a Chalkboard made out of an old picture!

Photo Collage

Baking Nook

New Curtains and Pictures

Cute Kid in a Wig

5 Months!

My little guy is 5 months old today! Full of laughter and smiles! He does this funny rocking with his body when he up on all fours. I've been told the next step is crawling!!! I am so not ready for that.


The weather here has been unseasonably warm! High 70's & 80's for October?! Unheard off! But I'm not complaining! We spent the day at our favorite Apple Orchard\Pumpkin Patch. This was E's second year going. Since last year he was in my belly.

2 feet tall! Only 3 more feet and he will be as tall as me!

(no that is not Grizzly Adams holding my son. It's his father who refuses to shave.)

(today he came into the living room and said, "If you walked into your 8th grade student's conferences and saw me what would you think?"

I said, "I would walk out ... please go shave!")

I am so excited to make continual trips to the apple orchard year after year. Of course I'm not looking forward to the year when E says, "Apple Orchards are LAME!"

It's bound to happen... teen angst is my bad karma!

Knock it Off!

My absolute favorite store of all time is Anthropologie!!! I seriously could go into that store and buy one of everything... if i was RICH! But alas I am not, and can only afford a few little things here and there.

Bless your heart Anthro, but sometimes the things you are trying to sell at the price you are selling them at are truly truly outrageous!

Recently, I was looking at mirrors online at Anthro and I saw this really cute one that I loved. Very simple and just what I was looking for. But with a price tag of $168, there was no way I was buying it.

Maybe I couldn't afford it, but I could try and make my own version of it! They used pretty tiles, and those I didn't have.

But I had pretty scrap book paper, so why not use those?!

(that is not a reflection of garbage in the mirror, just a lot of books in need of a book shelf and a whole mess of craft projects n' stuff that needed to be organized!)

Things I had on hand:

• Mirror
• Mod Podge
• Sponges
• Strong Glue
• Scrapbook Paper

The only thing I didn't have were tiles. I actually ended up finding wooden tiles that were the perfect size for what I was looking for. They have numbers on them, but I didn't care because I was going to be gluing paper over them anyway.

I cut out little scraps of paper to fit the tiles, Mod Podged the heck out of them and then glued them to the mirror. It was seriously so simple. My husband even sat and helped me cut out the papers and we had a little craft night. Of course he was also watching Fast Five so they both balanced each other out.

The result was this cute little numero...

(I Photoshopped a generic background into the mirror, because I didn't want my cute lil' mug to distract from the mirror)

Anthropologie Mirror: $168

My Knock Off : $2.99 (for the tiles, I had everything else!)

Sick

As in we all have the sickness here in the Crystal Casa. First my husband and then me and E. But life has to go on...

Before getting sick I had a fun weekend including a baby shower for my cousin Kelly. She got showered with the most awesomest presents ever. Which makes me wonder if we should all wait until our kids are toddler age to have showers. Presents are so much more fun!

Kelly's sister Erin was in town from Cambodia. I got a little teary eyed when I hugged her... but don't tell anyone. Baby Una was at home with babysitter Kyle, and i'm just dying to see her!

Sunday Tim's parents took us out for breakfast and were cool and left right away so we could all go to sleep.

Because of my sickness I have not worked on any projects. And i've been bad about emailing people (sorry Shan!)

It's been nice to just snuggle on the couch with my favorite 4 month old. He's a pretty funny kid. Sometimes we'll just be chillin' and i'll look over at him and say something inappropriate like POOP or FART! And he'll start laughing uncontrollably. Yeah it's probably immature and not very good for his delicate Tabula Rasa, but life is too short to not be silly once in awhile.

One of these days I'll get back to my Pinterest projects and my Autumn/Harvest/Halloween decorating. But for now we are on Season 3 of Felicity and my husband is actually enjoying it... life is Rad.

Time for a Tumble with the Bundle

Watching Daddy coach soccer. Go Panthers!

Do not adjust the color, I purposely bought a pink and brown highchair knowing I was having a boy. Hey-Oh!

Inspiring Word Art

Weeellll here it is! The first of my projects from an inspiring pin on Pinterest. As I promised in my previous post I wanted to take an idea that I saw on Pinterest and make it my own.

This is the picture I saw and it's from a lovely Etsy shop D6ANDCO, (I want to make sure to give props to the original & her shop)

What I really like most about this are the inspiring words. Taken from Galatians 5:22-23, The Fruit of the Spirit. What an awesome reminder of the attributes we should be striving for everyday! Like, Self-Control for example. I often want to eat Dairy Queen Snickers Blizzards and sometimes I need SELF-CONTROL! (I said inspiring, not mastered...yet!)

This was really a pretty easy project, besides the cutting, which I'll get to in a bit.

These are the materials I used:

• Canvas
  
• Aqua Acrylic Paint
• Scrap Book Paper (I used K&Company's Sweet Nectar)
• Mod Podge
• Paint Brush
• Scissors
• X-acto knife

I created the letters from my computer and printed them out. I hand cut each letter. YES! hand cut! The words are already making a difference, hello PATIENCE. (So yeah this would've been much easier if I owned a Silhouette... someday!!!)

I took the canvas and painted it an aqua blue and let it dry.

Once the canvas was dry I positioned my letters and made sure

everything fit. I took the Mod Podge and pretty much gooped up the whole thing, letters and canvas. Once that was dry I went over it again with another layer of Mod Podge. You can never have enough Mod Podge!

And when it was all said and done, this was the result:

And there you have it. A very fruitful canvas!

Duh, Pinning!

I have to admit, I'm a Pinterest addict. If you haven't heard of Pinterest you should probably go check it out. It's the best collection of ideas, recipes, home decorating, DIY projects, crafts, etc in one area.

My favorite thing to look for on Pinterest are DIY projects and crafts. I have a pretty extensive collection of ideas I would like to try and make myself. Don't you ever look at something and think, "I could do that!" I don't want to make exact copies of something someone else made, but use their idea as a spring board and creatively come up with something that is my own.

Sooo.... Once a week I plan on replicating something on Pinterest and then posting it here for all to see. I'm working on something really fun that I will post tomorrow!

*** I was planning on posting my project today, but forgot that the little guy had his 4month shots today. So I'm spending my day snuggling with him. I'll be posting before the end of the week. ***

4 Months!

Where oh where has the time gone? August was a busy month with a trip to Michigan to visit family and friends and my husband preparing to go back to work (math teacher). I didn't post much because I just wanted to spend the last few weeks of summer having fun, snuggling with my boys and enjoying the weather.

Everett continues to grow and reach awesome milestones. Like rolling from back to front, sitting up with almost no assistance and stranger anxiety. Which I guess having stranger anxiety is not so awesome, but hopefully that means he'll grow out of it sooner than later.

We are gearing up to take some fun classes through the ECFE (Early Childhood & Family Education) programs and MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers (and under).

I continue to work on the house, getting it organized, decorating and making it into a home. There might even be a blog change coming up but I'll write more about that as I work on it. Surprise Surprise... This is going to be fun. :)

When you have a second stop by Spearmint Baby where my talented & awesome cousin Kelly is featured for her cute play kitchen her and Kyle made! It will amaze you!!!

The HOT HOT HEAT is over now in MN and now it's Fall, apple picking, pumpkin patching and leaf raking weather!